Nonsense. Civil disobedience has a cost, and that cost is to suffer the legal penalties for disobeying the law, even though it be unjust. In this case the law was applied rather harshly — tripling the usual jail time for unpaid fines — but to enforce legal penalties for lawbreaking is not a police state.

Hezekiah Garrett

Germany had laws against being Jewish. You’re pulling our legs, aren’t you, Berger? You’re not really a walking advertisement for the importance of the liberal arts, are you?

Hezekiah Garrett

Belay my last, some fellow named Godwin insists it is a bad example.

You aren’t REALLY arguing that the Alabama which prompted a letter from the gaol of its’ most highly populated city was NOT a police state, are you?

You should enrich your vocabulary. There are bad things in the world besides Hitler, besides police states. Part of why Godwin survives is because lazy people invoke Hitler too often and so it’s a good rule of thumb to punish those who invoke him because the conversation is about to go off the rails.

I guess that tees me up to provide a few alternatives… no pressure…

Alabama’s governance was bifurcated and delusional about the evil serpent of racism at its bosom. It was willing to do a great deal more evil to cover up that evil. The best I’m coming up with is that Alabama chose to be mentally ill and would do a great deal of wrong to be able to pretend that all was light and right.

Dan Berger

“Being Jewish” was not doing something against the law. The Nuremberg Laws were more in the line of permission to rain crap down on Jews rather than laws against “being Jewish.” But I digress.

Civil disobedience is the deliberate flouting of an unjust law, or in this case the flouting of a just law (a prohibition on blocking a public entrance) in order to prevent an injustice. Part of the witness is that you suffer punishment for violating the law in pursuit of justice. But as TMLutas notes below, the existence of unjust laws does not a police state make.

LaVallette

Straw men argument: If the law is unjust in the first place then it is a police state. Remember the principle: enforcing the law does NOT necessarily mean enforcing justice. Many atrocities and crimes against humanity over the centuries, but in the last century in particular were carried out under the Law.

A police state is a society that is over-policed irrespective of the justice of its laws. If every corner had a policeman keeping an eye on you “just in case”, the creepy feeling would be the same no matter the legal code.